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subjective Definition

sub·jec·tive (səb jek′tiv)

adjective

  1. of, affected by, or produced by the mind or a particular state of mind; of or resulting from the feelings or temperament of the subject, or person thinking; not objective; personal a subjective judgment
  2. determined by and emphasizing the ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc. of the artist or writer, not just rigidly transcribing or reflecting reality
  3. Gram. nominative
  4. Philos. of or having to do with the perception or conception of a thing by the mind as opposed to its reality independent of the mind
  5. Med. designating or of a symptom or condition perceptible only to the patient
  6. Psychol.
    1. existing or originating within the observer's mind or sense organs and, hence, incapable of being checked externally or verified by other persons
    2. introspective

Etymology: ME < LL subjectivus, of the subject < subjectus: see subject

subjective Related Forms

sub·jec′·tively adverb sub′·jec·tiv′·ity (sub′jek tiv′ə tē) noun or sub·jec′·tive·ness

subjective Synonyms

subjective

modif.

  1. Not objective

    nonobjective, biased, personal, idiosyncratic; see individual 1, prejudiced.

  2. Related to the mind

    illusory, fanciful, resulting from a mental construct; see mental 2.

subjective Usage Examples

Preposition: as

hell: A thread of narrative runs through, and it's all as subjective as hell.

Adjective complement with noun phrase

make: Green explains why imagination is necessary in reading the Bible, but how this doesn't make everything problematically subjective.

Modifies a noun

  • opinion: At this point it all becomes pretty subjective personal opinions all round.
  • judgment: The growth in powers to make such subjective judgements will raise public law problems.
  • idealism: The view that I follow is that of objective Idealism, rather than the more usual subjective Idealism.
  • probability: One way of thinking about subjective probability is that it's just an elaboration of the traditional notion of ` belief ' .
  • well-being: Money and subjective well-being: It's not the money, it's the motives.
  • perception: It is sufficient for our purposes to model their subjective perceptions by choosing the cut-off value R m.

Modifying Another Word

  • purely: Hence, we are not talking about some purely subjective process of letting one's imagination run wild.
  • entirely: Beside which, such an endeavor must be entirely subjective.
  • somewhat: The nature of this type of research means that, to a point, data analysis is somewhat subjective.
  • highly: Percentage of success rates have to be highly subjective.
  • merely: But this does not mean they should be merely subjective.
  • essentially: Some objective testing of these essentially subjective judgments have been initiated through cooperation with other persons.

Used with adjective complement

become: The difficulty in measuring drop-out rates from distance learning programs is that the question of having dropped out becomes very subjective.

Preposition: in

  • sense: Even examination with the hands is seen to be subjective in some sense.
  • character: Or are the incidents largely or wholly subjective in character?

Preposition: than

objective: The measurement of service quality is much harder than that for product quality as it is more subjective than objective.